


A better way to go

by lwise2019



Series: Mikkel's Story [14]
Category: Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-29
Updated: 2019-11-29
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:15:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21588241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lwise2019/pseuds/lwise2019
Summary: Sigrun and Emil find cats.  This involves deaths.I've added my thoughts about cats in Y90.  They seem different from our cats and very expensive, as the home team discussed whether they should send a cat and decided it was too expensive.  I've tried to give a reason for that.
Series: Mikkel's Story [14]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1536739
Comments: 1
Kudos: 9





	A better way to go

Time passed and the rain fell. Mikkel finished scrubbing the laundry, dried it in the warm air from the engine, folded it and put it away, finally had time to climb into the tank and examine the pages that Tuuri had transcribed for him. She'd started at the beginning, when the writer, an intern (whatever that was), was pressed into service treating a large number of sick patients alone, the hospitals and doctors being overwhelmed. He didn't yet know, Mikkel could tell, that the disease was always fatal -- or worse.

Was that a shot? Many shots? Mikkel listened hard. The rain was still hammering on the roof of the tank. Perhaps that was all he'd heard. After several minutes of listening hard and hearing nothing but rain, Mikkel tried to get back to reading, still on edge.

* * *

Reynir had slept quietly but was now awake and wandering into the radio compartment where Tuuri had set up her typewriter. "Ohhh, you're awake," Tuuri said, making an effort to be friendly, "So, ummm, did you at least sleep well, or ...?"

"I suppose I did," the Icelander began, rubbing his eyes. "I did sleep well! I had an _awesome_ dream!" he continued excitedly, "Your brother from the picture, he was in it! And your cousin Lulli too! I told your brother that you're fine, and then we were all hanging out together and having a super great time!" His expression drooped a little. "Then I accidentally left."

"That's a .. nice dream, uh-huh. A little weird, maybe. And his name is Lalli, by the way ..."

"Wooow, you know _what?_ I think I might be a --"

"Help! Mikkel!!!" came a cry from outside the tank. Emil! " _Emergency!!!_ "

He _had_ heard shots! Why hadn't he acted before? "You two into isolation _now_ until the situation is cleared! Tuuri, you know the drill," he ordered as he grabbed what he could from their pathetic first aid kit. Dashing out into the rain, he shouted, "Who here needs medical attention?" At least they were both there and on their feet but ...

"Cats do!" Emil shouted back. He was holding something protectively in his hands and Sigrun was cradling something else. Neither seemed injured except some long, bleeding scratches on Sigrun's face. Cats, Mikkel thought, bewildered, where had they found cats?

"She is cold and wet and sick!" Emil stated, holding out a tiny, bedraggled kitten. "You have to fix her."

There was only one response Mikkel could give to Emil's determined face: "I see. I will dedicate my time and effort to revitalizing this wild and feral animal you found."

* * *

He thought Emil's kitten might make it if she could be persuaded to take solid food. The cat that Sigrun had brought, though ... She was too weak to resist as he carefully examined her wounds. "Hush, shh, it will be all right," he murmured, stroking her head gently, then turned to the first aid kit. He knew _that_ drug would be there. Every first aid kit in the army had included it.

> The grosslings were dead at last. They _couldn't_ be driven back; they _never_ retreated; you just had to kill and kill and kill ...
> 
> Mikkel knelt beside his friend Christer Olsson. They'd fought side by side ever since they landed in Rash-infested Denmark, but now ... Christer was still _alive_ , Mikkel saw with horror. A medic making his way along the line joined Mikkel on the ground.
> 
> "Are you hurt?" he asked. For a moment, Mikkel thought he was asking Christer, and wanted somehow to laugh at the absurdity of the question. But no, he was asking _Mikkel_. Mikkel looked at himself and quite suddenly felt the pain of a gash down his left arm.
> 
> "A little -- some -- but my friend --"
> 
> The medic had pressed a syringe against the injured man's arm. As the drug went in, Christer took a last agonized breath, sighed, and went limp.

"That's going to make her feel better?" Emil asked, looking up from drying off the kitten.

"Yes," Mikkel said flatly, injecting the entire contents of the syringe. The cat flinched for a moment and then relaxed as Mikkel stroked her flank kindly and crooned, "There, there."

"Really? That's it? So I just wasted my time carrying her here," Sigrun complained as he gathered up the corpse a few moments later.

"You gave her a better way to go." It was the only comfort he could offer.

"What?" Emil objected, shocked. "You didn't even try!"

Mikkel looked down at the torn body in his arms, seeing another lying on the bloody ground. "Trying isn't always a beneficial course of action, Emil."

"I tried so hard! A lot! Earlier!" Emil was truly distressed.

"Hmm. Perhaps giving the cats a proper burial will give you a sense of closure. How does that sound? Emil?"

Emil wouldn't look at him, concentrating on wrapping up the kitten in a warm towel. Four limp bundles of fur lay on the table where he'd laid them after pulling them from his pockets.

"Sigrun, you try it. I can't tell if he understands what I'm saying or not." Emil had been doing a lot better at understanding Danish, but still ...

"Sure," Sigrun replied in Norwegian. "Emil! If we bury the cats will you stop moping?" That wasn't exactly what Mikkel had had in mind, but at least she got an answer.

"I don't care," Emil muttered in Swedish, in a tone that said that he very much did care, "... do what you prefer."

The four immunes trooped outside into the rain, digging a small grave for the cat and her four kittens and covering it with a cairn of rocks, the heaviest Mikkel could find.

"There we go," Sigrun said, patting Emil's shoulder consolingly, "you feeling any better yet?"

"... Said I don't care," he muttered. There being nothing more to do or say, Sigrun tapped Mikkel on the shoulder, indicating the tank with her head. Leaving Emil staring at the cairn and Lalli standing guard, the older two went back inside.

* * *

"You saw only one cat?" he asked as he applied surgical tape to the clawmarks on Sigrun's jaw. They were not so deep as Mikkel had feared and required no stitches, just some surgical tape to hold them together as they healed.

"Yeah. She was up a pole and didn't want to come down. There was a grossling around that went after Emil. He shot it, or shot at it, maybe. We should ask him if he hit it."

"But there were five kittens? And they were all together?"

"Yeah, in a hole that was filling with water."

"But _five_? And only one cat?"

"Weird, isn't it? But the cat was feral, you said it yourself. Maybe they're different."

They'd have to be different, Mikkel thought. He knew from a few old Icelandic books that before the Rash, cats had been very different. Not very smart, not very trainable ... and they had so many kittens that they were often surgically sterilized to keep them from breeding! Modern cats, well, they were so smart that the smartest could almost talk, but they bred almost as slowly as people: one or possibly two kittens in a birth, one birth every couple of years. Not infrequently, they were born sterile. Cats were immune, yes, and apparently always had been, but they had been affected by the Rash, no doubt about it. And yet this mother cat, surely exposed all her life, had produced _five_ kittens. He wished there had been any chance of saving her.

A cat like that would be a prize above any book.


End file.
